Fuel injection, ECUs and the pressure of NASCAR racing

SAN FRANCISCO -- NASCAR this season embraced one of the most
significant engine-performance changes in the past 50 years: It
mandated fuel-injection, throwing over 50 years of carburetor use
fondly remembered by engineers and mechanics.

It was a high-profile
switch, and all eyes were on the teams this season to
see how fuel injection would stand up to brutal race track
environments. And no one was more in the center of that collective
gaze than Freescale and McLaren Electronic
Systems.

The two companies, which have worked together on automotive
electronics designs since 2000, won the bid to supply the
engine-control unit managing the new fuel-injection systems starting
this season. The McLaren TAG-400N--designed
specifically for NASCAR Sprint Cup Series cars--controls
eight-cylinder race engines with Freescale Power Architecture MCUs
at its core. Freescale's microcontroller evaluates data from sensors
all over the engine, then determines the precise amount of fuel to
be delivered to the engine's manifold—at about 1,000 times per
second.

In with the new...

(Source: NASCAR.com)

It wasn't a huge jump for the pair--a version of the TAG-400 has
been used by the Indy Racing League (IRL) since 2007--but NASCAR is
big, and there was considerable pressure to perform. On top of that,
NASCAR's biggest race every season is its first, the Daytona 500. If
the ECUs fail during that race, it's a big black eye on Freescale,
McLaren and other components vendors in the system.

"It (the change) was about competition on the track," said Steve
Nelson director of marketing for the Americas at Freescale.
"When you change the competition--introduce a new golf ball or
whatever--changing that introduces risk. How is it going to work
out?"

Analyzing 8 cylinders various parameters and controlling the fuel injection to these cylinders at 1000 times per second is quite a high speed processing of data.Probably soon we can see these kind of ECU's in the regular automotive segment.